Wow! Amazing! What a great effort and epic trip.Thanks for posting that video Bob. A couple of questions.Looks like the aka broke at the brace bolt hole?What are the plastic bag thingies out near the SB ama?

PS:A trip like that deserves to be properly documented. Shame the video wasn't better quality.What type of camera?

Earlier he broke the aka shear-bolts, and the spares. There IS a reason that it's a shear-bolt there. Notice also, the ropes tied to keep the aka from collapsing while underway.

stringy wrote:

What are the plastic bag thingies out near the SB ama?

That's about 50 pounds of dive weights on belts, Duct-taped to each windward aka, at the ama. He said it leveled out the boat nicely since the wind was always coming from this right. This wasn't his first crossing in conditions like this.

stringy wrote:

Shame the video wasn't better quality.

The first recorded video (and roughest) was out of focus, possibly because of conditions, or bumping a setting. All the others were great, but not as extreme. He wanted to be sure that anyone thinking about doing this, knew what they were getting themselves into!

Kelly is one of the few people I know that is capable of doing this, surviving it, and then sailing in like it was an easy one hour light sail. He seemed as calm and fresh after 12 hours of that, than most of us are before launch. I am very good at sailing my AI's. Kelly makes me look like a beginner.

I have a great newer laptop 64bit, with plenty of power, multi-cores with lots of memory and duel large fast hard drives ... But no new video editing software yet for it. So I used Windows Live Movie Maker (free) which stopped functioning after 4 hours of editing! (I guess I got what I paid for!)

So, everything you see there was done on an older 32 bit XP laptop, limited memory with at least 2 generation old Roxio VideoWave software. I've been a computer professional for over 30 years (semi-retired now), but NOT in video editing.

Thanks for those details Bob.Any idea of the camera model?It wasn't just the focus issue. The 'jello wobble' (digital distortion/elongation) was very noticeable. Don't get me wrong, I'm not being critical of the video as such as I really enjoyed watching it. It's just that I feel that epic crossing deserves a higher quality recording, which is easier to achieve these days, given the number of cheap HD action cams available.

It's a Fujifilm Finepix XP, on a Panfish Pole (28" long) mounted with a Mightymount. Even with 3 guide lines, the rough 3D movements were too much to steady it.

Play the video again. YouTube offered to "stabilize" the video. The results were comical. I reverted it back, but you may have watched it in the few minutes it was up. The boat was like rubber, and the text weaved wildly!

I saw it when he came in, and did think that someone's Eiffel Tower would have been better in those conditions!

I have that fuji camera and when it gets shaken and stirred it pops into "Macro" focus and stays there. Sometimes it locks focus on something very close like the sail/sheet (or in this case the gaff?) and stays that way. I lost a lot of useful footage this way.

Play the video again. YouTube offered to "stabilize" the video. The results were comical. I reverted it back, but you may have watched it in the few minutes it was up. The boat was like rubber, and the text weaved wildly!

I saw it when he came in, and did think that someone's Eiffel Tower would have been better in those conditions!

Thanks Bob for that solution.Downloaded it again and Googles stabilizing was the problem. In the first clip I watched the TI bent like a banana and Kelly's head went from normal to conehead each time the boat lifted. There is a lot of camera shake from that mount, though in those conditions who knows how the "Eiffel Tower" would have performed? Still, I think the 3 solid attachment points would have helped. I've found that when the camera and kayak move as one the video is easier to watch despite the scenery jumping all over the place.It would be good if Kelly could borrow a GoPro set to R3 mode (best stability) for the next attempt. Just make sure it has plenty of anti-fog pads fitted. Fogging is the biggest issue when the camera is left on for a long time.